I don't clearly remember whether he learned to walk or ride a bike first, as if the passion for two wheels had always lived in his mind. When I think of my father, I immediately think of his tenacity, his genuineness, the most loyal and true person I have ever known.

Born in Palermo in 1929, the youngest of nine children, from a humble "working-class" background, with pride and dedication to his work, that particular pride that characterized the dignified humility required in post-war Italy.

Alongside his hard work as a tire fitter, I was fortunate to see him race bikes. It was always a spectacle to see him regularly beating his colleagues, often younger than himself. It was beautiful to see him on a bike, rising up on the handlebars near the finish line to conquer yet another trophy that, along with other awards, filled the rooms of our home.

Magnificent in the saddle, he created a perfect symbiosis with the bike. It was a sight to see him descending those curves that seemed to bite into the Sicilian terrain, and precisely two curves marked his life: the first in France, during a stage of the Dauphiné Libéré that betrayed him, taking away a dream he had pursued with so much effort (wearing the jersey of the Girardengo cycling team, of which only a few elite could be part), when the brake lever slipped, pointing directly at his knee and thus tearing away his great passion for cycling; the second in his amateur years, due to a car encountered while descending, which made him plunge into the dark abyss, slowly leading him to his end.

Discussing cycling with my father meant retracing a decade of two-wheel history. It meant, for example, talking about jerseys with three pockets in the back and two in the front, just like the shorts, always and only made of wool, baggy fustagno pants with long socks for winter training and always with a newspaper page between one jersey and another.

My father was the son of a true culture, characterized by eternally solid, indestructible values, such as morality, the weight of a given word, the courage of a true man with a protective awareness towards his family, with the severity and patriarchal thinking typical of his times. The simplistic authority of a father who will always be my first life teacher.

My father is the permanent icon of my path, a fundamental link in my educational formation, he always conquered everything with courage, passion, and determination.

His countless victories are still alive in my heart. He used to say "in cycling, what you sow you reap, you can never lie to your body" and his cycling was deeply marked by post-war hunger, when many became cyclists to escape their condition. As an Independent (Pro) with Catalano (winner of a Tour stage) and Di Fiore, he dominated the Regional and National stage, with Agipgas and the Cali-Broni Erg Girardengo team, where Aldo Moser and Arnaldo Pambianco rode, he was a great protagonist in the Tour of Sicily and other Italian classics.

This Man was my father. Once I asked him why he loved cycling so much: he replied that in the effort of two wheels, he was "Free". And above all, he had found the courage to live, nothing scared him, passion made him Happy.

Simply Thank You Dad, for your hidden greatness that still follows me from up there.

from Men Who Know How to Color the Darkness